"Are you going to make us wait for it?" Sam asked.

"You know the limitations we face in the Pacific."

Trent stirred in his seat. "If you mean that we don't have the horses to—"

"It depends on which horses we use," Jack said. Both insiders considered that for a moment.

"Gloves off?" Al Trent asked.

Ryan nodded. "All the way off. Will you hassle us about it?"

"Depends on what you mean by that. Tell us," Fellows ordered. Ryan did.

"You're really willing to stick it out that far?" Trent asked.

"We don't have a choice. I suppose it would be nice to fight it out with cavalry charges on the field of honor and all that stuff, but we don't have the horses, remember? The President needs to know if Congress will back him up. Only you people will know the black part. If you support us, then the rest of the people on the Hill will fall in line."

"If it doesn't work?" Fellows wondered.

"Then there's a hanging party for all hands. Including you," Ryan added.

"We'll keep the committee in line," Trent promised. "You're playing a high-risk game, my friend."

"True enough," Jack agreed, thinking of the lives at risk. He knew that Al Trent was talking about the political side, too, but Ryan had commanded himself to set those thoughts aside. He couldn't say so, of course. Trent would have considered it a weakness. It was remarkable how many things they could disagree on. But the important thing was that Trent's word was good.

"Keep us informed?"

"In accordance with the law," the National Security Advisor replied with a smile. The law required that Congress be notified after "black" operations were carried out.

"What about the Executive Order?" An Order dating back to the Ford administration prohibited the country's intelligence agencies from conducting assassinations.

"We have a Finding," Ryan replied. "It doesn't apply in time of hostilities." A Finding was essentially a Presidential decree that the law meant what the President thought it meant. In short, everything that Ryan had proposed was now, technically speaking, legal, so long as Congress agreed. It was a hell of a way to run a railroad, but democracies were like that.

"Then the i's are dotted," Trent observed.

Fellows concurred with a nod: "And the f's are crossed." Both congressmen watched their host lift a phone and punch a speed-dial button.

"This is Ryan. Get things moving."

The first move was electronic. Over the outraged protests of CINCPAC, three TV crews set up their cameras on the edge of the side-by-side dry docks now containing Enterprise and John Stennis.